2015 New York State Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System Report

The annual NYS Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System (PedNSS) report provides data on the prevalence and trends of nutrition-related indicators for infants and children (< 5 years of ages) enrolled in the New York Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). The list of indicators includes low birthweight, short stature, underweight, overweight, anemia, breastfeeding (e.g. initiation, duration, and exclusivity), smoking in household, and TV viewing.

If you have any question regarding the PedNSS reports, please send your inquiry to WICDATA@health.ny.gov with PedNSS as the subject title.

Highlights from the 2015 NYS PedNSS Report

There was a 3.3% decrease in the number of individual infants/children certified for NYS WIC from 442,335 (2014) to 427,564 (2015)

Slightly less whites and blacks enrolled in NYS WIC in 2015 compared to 2014, while there was a 0.6 percentage point increase for Asians.

Prevalence of short stature increased from 4.8% (2014) to 5.3% (2015) among all infants/children in NYS WIC.

Across all infants/children in NYS WIC, the crude underweight rate rose from 3.4% (2014) to 4.5% (2015).

The crude prevalence of obese NYS WIC infants/children continued to decrease, reaching the lowest level of 10.1% (2015) since 1989. The decline in obesity rate among infants/children aged <5 years was substantial (e.g. >0.5 percentage points) in all racial/ethnic groups (except the mixed-race/ethnicity category). It seems that the improvement occurred primarily in the <24 months age group.

Across all NYS WIC children 2-4 years old, the crude obese and overweight prevalence decreased by 0.7 and 0.4 percentage points from 2014 to 2015, respectively. Great improvement (e.g. >0.5 percentage points) in obesity prevalence was observed in Asians, Hispanics, and blacks. Furthermore, Asians and blacks also made considerable progress in reducing overweight rate 2014 to 2015. The 12.9% and 15.7% rates of obese and overweight in 2015 were comparable with the 13.2% in 1990 and 15.8% in 1998.

Breastfeeding initiation rate continued to climb from 82.4% (2014) to 83.4% (2015) with substantial increase across all racial/ethnic groups. There are sizable improvement regarding breastfeeding duration (i.e. 70.0% to 71.6% for ≥4 weeks, 52.9% to 53.9% for ≥3 months) and exclusivity measurements (i.e. 22.1% to 23.2% for ≥1 month, 13.0% to 14.3% for ≥3 months, and 7.3% to 8.0% for ≥6 months) from 2014 to 2015. It seems that whites were the frontrunner regarding improving duration, followed by Asians and black. However, Hispanics made little improvement on breastfeeding duration in 2015.